Another Place
by TigerofRobare
Summary: Clark is somehow transported into the Superman movieverse, spesifically Superman Returns. Caution: Spoilers!
1. Chapter 1

Another Place

By TigerofRobare

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Smallville or Superman Returns. They are owned by Warner Brothers.

Chapter One

Through the Looking-glass

It was another one of those days for Clark Kent, another day he wished he was a normal human being and that there had been no meteor shower and he would not have to keep secrets from his friends. It had started out simple enough, all of his friends compared notes and had tried to work out the speed at which he was running between events. They had laughed at the result and concluded they must not be keeping good time.

All of them except for Lex and Lana. They knew about Clark's strength, his weakness to meteor rocks, and other things that didn't make sense for normal people.

"Clark," Lex had said, "we're your friends─you can trust us."

So Clark had been forced to lie to his friends yet again and the more he did it, the more he hated it. "I don't know what you two are talking about. I've got nothing to hide."

They left, but Clark knew they were not convinced and Lex had the resources to uncover his powers and perhaps even his origins.

So he stalked out into the field. Clark picked up a tenacious looking stone and hurled it against a tree. The tree rocked from the impact and the stone shattered. Angrily he gathered the pieces together and melted them into a new rock with his heat vision.

The black haired Kryptonian teenager walked through the woods outside his family's farm, he didn't see the entrance to the cave, covered as it was by years of vegetation and the weight of the hill, until it was too late. Clark fell a few feet, impacting heavily on the hard, rocky floor. He was about to jump out when something caught his eye.

It was a thick, brass-like ring. Similar to the thing the two Kryptonians had used to try to send Clark into the "Phantom Zone," whatever that was. Hesitantly, he approached it. When he was within a foot of it, a brilliant, bright, white light started to shine from it and the ring hovered in the air. There was a flash of bright blue light, then nothing.

Clark had lost consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Clark Kent and Superman Don't Look Anything Alike

When Clark regained consciuosness, the first thing he noticed was that he was no longer in the cave. He was lying face down in a wheat field and it was night. Grogily, Clark stood up and brushed dirt and undergrowth off of his red jacket, flannel shirt, and blue jeans.

"Ugh," Clark said, rubbing his stiff neck, "Mom and Dad must be worried sick."

Clark looked around, trying to collect his bearings. Everything was familiar, but different; changed somehow. Then he saw the sign. It was a "Welcome to Smallville" roadsign, but it didn't say "Meteor Capital of the World" or anything like that. It also gave the population at just under four hundred. Clark began to worry.

But perhaps it was just an old sign that never got replaced. That thought put Clark at ease for a little bit, but then decided that he had to know. He ran at superspeed through the town and quickly was scared witless. No LutherCorp, no castle, no Talon. Something strange had happened.

There were two places he hadn't dared to go, his home and the cemetary. He thought that perhaps he had traveled forward or backwards in time. Clark went into the small graveyard, by this time very afriad of what he might find and almost screamed out of pure terror by the first thing he saw: it was a granite gravestone, well kept with lots of flowers, but partially hidden by ivy. The legend read: JONATHAN KENT.

Clark sank to his knees. "No, no, not that," he wept. Then he cleared away the ivy with a blast of heat vision and stopped crying only to be more puzzled. It read: JONATHAN KENT/ 1914-1978/ LOVING HUSBAND AND FATHER.

"What?" Clark said. It was all he could say.

There was still one more place to visit, the place he dreaded more than anywhere because of what he might find. Clark ran as fast he was able to where his home was supposed to stand. He was forced to quickly hide in a cornfield, because a pick-up came from the Kent farm. He had heard "Bye, Martha" with his superhearing, so that was good. He hoped.

Yes, the mailbox read "Kent," but it was not his mailbox. The farm was not his, neither was the house or barn. Now Clark screamed: "Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!" and punched the barn wall, collapsing a wall. The roof fell and broke around him. A silver-haired old woman came out of the house.

"Who's there?" she called. She sounded kindly.

Clark yelled again and zapped the rest of the barn with his heat vision. As the flames and smoke rose into the air, she called again: "Clark, is that you?"

Clark could take no more. "What is this place?" he demanded, loudly.

The woman obviously did not like his tone of voice. "This _place_ is your home. You may not like what you found, but we all have to face unpleasent truths sometime. And that is no reason to rampage around. Earth may not be Krypton, but it is your place; you've got to remember that. Your father─your _real_ father, sent you here to protect you. _You _chose to use your abilities to help us."

The strangeness of the woman's words forced to Clark to settle down. He was stil angry, but realized he had to do something about the fire before suspicious firemen arrived. Using superspeed, he put it out. Now he faced the silver-haired woman.

"Who are you?" Clark said.

The woman stared at him, unable to speak. Then her eyes softened and she hugged Clark.

"Oh, Clark, what's happened to you? You look so different. What happened while you were away?"

Clark gently pushed the old lady away. "What's happened to me?" he said incredulously. "Nothing's happened to me. But something's happened all right: everything here is different, changed. Dad's alive─he wasn't born in nineteen fourteen, you─if you're Mom─have red hair. Where's the Castle, where's Lex and Lionel and Chloe and Lana? Where's the Talon?

"Some─" Clark stopped mid-rant. He had heard something. "What was that?"

In reply, the old woman pointed up in the sky. Clark turned around. There, speeding towards them, was a giant fireball. Somethings never change in Smallville. "Get back to the house."

The fireball got closer and Clark saw that it was a spaceship, built like an array of giant crystals around a central point. It had an occupant. And it was going to crash in the Kent farm. Clark was still Clark, though, for all his anger and was not about to let that happen. To the air he took, delighting in being aloft. He grabbed onto a crystalline spire and slowed its descent, stopping the craft and settling it down neatly in the field.

A hatch of some kind opened and out of it stumbled the most strangely dressed person Clark had ever seen─and he watched a lot of football─the man was fairly tall, with black hair and blue eyes. He was dressed in a blue body-stocking, had red underwear on the outside, red boots, a red cape, and a stylized yellow "S" on his chest.

"Clark!" the old woman yelled and ran to embrace the man.

Clark just stood there, dumbfounded and holding onto a spire. His anger was rising again, he wanted answers. He gripped the spire more tighly, deforming it.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Plausable Explanations

Clark could take it no more. "What is this?" he raged. "I want some answers."

The man in blue looked at the old woman. "Who is this?" he asked.

"I don't know," she confessed, "I thought he was you. He has your strength."

The man in blue looked at Clark with his blue eyes. Clark felt like the man could see right through him, but suddenly realized he probably could.

"In the first place, thank-you. In the second, what's your name?" the man in blue said.

"My name's Clark Kent. I want to know: What's happened here, Smallville is totally different."

"You can't be Clark Kent─that's my name. And how did you get my powers?"

Clark stared at the man and the old woman, unsure of how to explain everything; unsure of weather to explain anything. He supposed that honesty was his best option for once. The old woman had already seen him in action and this bizzarely dressed circus act seemed to have Kryptonian abilities.

"Well, my parents weren't exactly from around here. They came from another planet and sent me to Earth─" Clark began, but Blue Clark had picked him up and was holding him by his collar.

"I don't know how you found out about me, but harm one person─"

"Harm?" Clark yelled. "All I want is to find out what happened to my home, to the Talon, to LuthorCorp, to Lionel's castle, to my family!"

Blue Clark let him drop. Clark levitated himself down unintentionally. He was about to further the issue when the old woman intervened. "Perhaps it would be better to continue this after one of you has hidden this spaceship."

Blue Clark nodded. "Good idea." It took him about a minute and a half to bury the crystalline craft.

The old woman led the two of them in to the house where Blue Clark changed into casual flannel and blue jeans. Eyeing each other warily they swapped their similar stories. They came to realize very much how alike they were and soon they trying to figure out what happened to Clark's world over apple pie.

"I guess," Blue Clark decided, "that to you, this is some kind of alternate universe─a what if things went differently. But what I can't figure out is how we're going to get you back to where you belong."

"But doesn't your Fortress of Solitude have Kryptonian tech?" Clark asked.

Blue Clark nodded as Martha collected the dishes. "But I've never heard of anything like that before─except perhaps with the Phantom Zone."

"Well, until you figure something out, what are you going to do, Clark?" Martha said. "I don't think the neighbors would be me getting another foundling."

Clark nodded. But Blue Clark had a gleam of inspiration in his eyes. "I know. You could come back to Metropolis with me. We could say you're my unknown son by a college sweetheart that I've spent the last five years looking for─Clark Kent, Junior."

Clark aquiesced, but inwardly, he groaned.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Metropolis

Events those first few days of both Clarks being together were shaping up in ways that neither knew about. Lex Luthor had surreptiously managed to inherit a large amount of money and an ice breaker, the _Gertrude_, and had gotten back to the Fortress of Solitude with his criminal associates and stolen the Kryptonian crystals that contained all of the knowledge and power of Krypton.

But ignorance is bliss and Blue Clark was none the wiser. Instead, the first thing he did after breakfest was to call the _Daily Planet's_ editor, Perry White.

"_Daily Planet _Newsroom, Jimmy Olson speaking," came a familiar voice over the line.

"Jimmy? It's Clark! If you could get Mr. White for me, that'd be swell."

"Mr. Clark─I mean, Mr. Kent─it's so good to hear your voice again. I─"

"Mr. White, please, Jimmy."

"Right." There was a moment of static interspersed with the noise of the newsroom.

"Yup, sounds the same," Clark remarked as he got a glass of water.

The next voice Blue Clark heard was Editor-in-Chief Perry White's. "Kent? I suppose you want your old job back then. Your in luck, we have an opening. Can you be here tomorrow?"

"Well, yes," Blue Clark said, "but I─"

It was too late, Mr. White had hung up. Clark laughed.

"I guess we're going to have to sleep on the streets then, Junior," Blue Clark said. "We don't have a place to stay."

"We can stay here," Clark said, "and run into Metropolis."

Blue Clark shook his head. "It's too far away─all the way out on the East Coast."

Clark look crestfallen. "Oh."

Over the course of the day, Blue Clark called around to find an apartment, but with no success. He also booked a flight to Metropolis via Central City National and got hotel reservations. He was able to get then cheap because he knew the owner from a human interest piece he had done years ago.

The flight to Metropolis was uneventful. Blue Clark spent the time writing, brushing up on his skills while Clark read, listened to music, and watched the movie (_Spiderman_), which he found quite unrealistic. Once installed in the hotel they both hit the sack instantly.

The next day they were up early. Blue Clark got more into his roll of an almost annoyingly mild-mannered reporter and the other Clark as the loner who discovers that his father is a total wuss.

"Secrets and lies, lies and secrets," Clark said. "My entire life seems built on deceit. How do you do it?"

"By only using my powers as Superman and nobody really suspects that we're one in the same. I guess to get anybody to notice something you have to have a brightly colored suit."

They took a taxi to the Planet Building. After paying the driver, Blue Clark promptly got stuck in the revolving doors. Clark just rolled his eyes. Inside the building, Blue Clark pretended to get lost and shyly asked a woman for directions. Clark just sighed and said "There was a directory, I'll go look."

In the Newsroom for the first time in years, Blue Clark approached the first familiar face he saw, red-haired, freckle-faced Jimmy Olson. Jimmy was talking on the phone and fiddling with his camera when the two Clarks entered. Blue Clark walked towards Jimmy confidently, saying "Jimmy!" but tripped over his big feet and went crashing to the floor.

Jimmy helped Blue Clark to get up, Clark just watched amusedly with his arms folded over his chest. "Mr. Clark, I mean, Mr. Kent! You're back!" Jimmy said, very excited. He embraced Blue Clark in a big bear hug─quite a feat since he was four inches shorter than Blue Clark ─and then noticed Clark.

"Oh─uh─excuse me," Jimmy said. Then he noticed Clark. "Who's this?"

Blue Clark put his arm around Clark's shoulers. "Jimmy, I'd like you to meat Clark Kent, Junior. He's the son of an old college sweetheart of mine who I've spent the last five years looking for."

Clark shrugged off the arm and shook Jimmy Olson's proffered hand. "Hi."

Jimmy looked at Blue Clark. "This is an amazing coincidence. Lois had a kid five years ago, with Richard─he's Mr. White's nephew. They're engaged."

Blue Clark looked ready to tear Metropolis to pieces.


End file.
